Chupacabra

Jeff D. - You're being needlessly confrontational and obtuse. Your argument thus far has been based on the manual - which as others have quite adequately shown, was not always adhered to. If you can't prove that it was in this case, any further arguments basically boil down to "mommy, why can't I have it?" ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Lets not forget that survivability in the event of a hit is not the main reason to go hull down. The idea was not to get hit in the first place. It's still quite a bit harder to hit a hull down tank than it is to hit a tank in the open. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Hrm. Well, as JD did, I probably should've checked the source before I replied. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Dammit PolTroon, what are you smoking this time? I clearly indicated in my post that they're French. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

French! ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh. [This message has been edited by Chupacabra (edited 12-13-2000).]

I find that with the beta patch, it is considerably easier to knock out tanks with infantry - mobility or immobility not withstanding. In a PBEM game recently, my opponent ran a platoon against a mobile Sherman and successfully close assaulted it. About five turns later I did the same to one of his Lynxes. In both cases the assaulting platoon had to run a not-inconsiderable distance to the tank. It also seems that infantry are more likely to use their organic LATW in the beta patch, which is, IMO, A Good Thing. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Ten minutes sounds extremely unlikely to me. Keep in mind also that "immobilized" doesn't necessarily mean that the tank's simply thrown a track. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

AFAIK, the Archer was a stopgap measure until the Firefly could be put into service. The British needed something that could punch through a Tiger sooner rather than later. The Cromwell VII is slow, well, because it's British. Although British tank design was changing towards the end of the war, British tanks during the war generally fell into two categories: fast, lightly armed and armored Cruiser tanks, and slow, heavy Support tanks. The Cromwell VII is most definitely a Support tank. It's not designed as a tank killer qua tank killer, and if you try to use it as such, you'll probably be disappointed. As Grunto pointed out, it does have shaped charge shells, so in a pinch it'll serve, but it's (forgive the pun) hit or miss. The Challenger was a decent tank. IIRC it's a Cromwell modified to take the 17-pounder gun. It's got decent mobility, decent armor, and the 17-pounder's a killer. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

AFAIK CM doesn't model min/max gun depression. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Ah well, guess I was wrong about the Abrams (worst thing about this board, it's relentless in pointing out the gaps in your knowledge ). But in any case, another question for those in the know - how well would the Abrams stand up to the logistical nightmare in which German tankers were laboring in 1944-45? I'm basically taking issue with the idea that German tanks were failures because of their design, regardless of those logistical concerns. Considering that, by June '44, the 8th Air Force was busily turning the German fuel industry into the German smoking hole industry and making mush out of the rail and road networks, and that there were very few people left who could maintain the tanks even if you could get parts to do so, I'd say it's quite amazing that the damn things fought at all. Pound for pound, Tigers and Panthers were more than a match for anything the Allies could field until quite near the end of the war. But no matter how good a design is, if you can't fuel it or maintain it, it's not going to hold up too well under strain. And like Jeff, I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that it was in the Allies best interest to crank out tons of mediocre tanks when a superior option was available. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

I agree with Scott - I mostly play QBs, and I think it would add a lot to have no knowledge of what I was getting into before picking my forces. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

I'm not sure I'm following this whole "Shermans were more reliable than Tigers, therefore better" argument. Perhaps someone who's more up on modern arms can tell us this: how much time does an Abrams spend in maintenance compared to time in the field? I'm not prepared to stake the farm on the answer, but I'd be extremely surprised if the Abrams is a good deal less "reliable" than the Sherman - that is, I'm betting that the Abrams spends more time being maintained WRT to the Sherman. Does that mean that the Sherman's a better tank than the Abrams? More advanced designs tend to be flukier and more difficult to maintain than simpler designs. And while simplicity has its virtues, I don't think I'd point to it as making one piece of equipment better than another. I believe that the German tanks' "unreliability" has quite a bit more to do with the fact that Germany was pretty well wiped out by D-Day and could muster neither the resources nor the personnel to adequately maintain its equipment, and not to any design flaws. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

CATGuy - I kinda doubt that Sherman crews would be as cavalier in dismissing Tigers and Kingtigers as "failures." As Jeff pointed out, the oft-quoted "5 Shermans to 1 Panther" rule isn't always the gospel truth, but as a rule of thumb, it does show what odds Allied tankers gave themselves when facing the more advanced German tanks. Allied tanks did have their good points, but generally speaking, until the introduction of the Pershing, Allied tanks were overmatched by their German counterparts. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Odd, I'm running CM on an Inspiron 3700, and while I've had a few problems, CM ran just fine right off the bat. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Forever Babra: Try saying what needs saying in one post people... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I am God. All shall tremble before me. That is all. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

WRT to the laptop question, if you need/want a PC: I'm playing CM on a Dell C433, 96 mb RAM, Win 98SE, and for the most part it plays quite nicely. Also, IIRC, nVidia is releasing a version of their Geforce chip for PC laptops, which should be quite nice. Dunno when they're releasing it, but it should be fairly soon.

Hrm. Whenever the Aussies get uppity, I like to remind them of two words. <h1>Yahoo Serious</h1>. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Warren Spector created Thief, System Shock, and most recently Deus Ex. Also Ultima Underworld IIRC. He's creditable. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Rightyo. The Day you nippleheads have been waiting for is nigh. That's right, I'm finally going to start returning files again. I am going to take a shower, go for a lovely walk along the Thames, eat some healthy and delicious fresh fruit, perhaps take a refreshing crap, and then I will get down to the serious business of swapping your feet with your ears. You may all commence cowering. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

War's nuts, **** happens, people get lucky. I've seen Tigers bounce shells off Shermans. Nearly anything's possible if you play for long enough. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Um, that's just not true. I've seen several Shermans up close, and the front turret isn't sloped at all. I'd be curious to see your sources for this? ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh. [This message has been edited by Chupacabra (edited 12-11-2000).]

Kanonier Reichmann - You did sorta ignore one of my earlier paragraphs <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Expansionism was seen by the military and nationalist power base as both a necessity and a duty. A necessity, because without the conquered nations' resources, Japan could be smothered by the economic sanctions which the United States was applying. But it's worth noting that Japan had occupied Korea since 1910 and Manchuria since 1932,long before the application of the potentially crippling sanctions over which the Japanese eventually attacked the US.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>(emphasis added) For me, the bottom line is that the more research I do on these subjects (and I've done quite a bit, although more from the German side than the Japanese), it becomes increasingly difficult to attempt to pigeonhole any of the combattants as having been one way or the other. Every time I feel like I've pinned down one side to the point where I completely understand their thought processes and motivations, something comes up to throw a spanner in the works. And of course, it's always dangerous to assume that nations are homogenous, monolithic groups in which everyone thinks alike. There were many Japanese, Germans, Italians, Romanians, etc., who were perfectly horrified by the war. It's not well known, but a Japanese man, Sempo Sugihara, is recognized by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for his efforts to save Lithuanian Jews in 1940-41.( http://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/index_righteous.html ) This certainly doesn't fit in with the common misconception of Japanese people during the war. All that said, I do think it's useful to outline, admittedly in broad strokes, the general trends that led to war. Edited to fix the link. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh. [This message has been edited by Chupacabra (edited 12-09-2000).]

Well, IIRC very few Jacksons were produced during the war. So I'd guess that A) there weren't many 90mm guns available to stick on tanks or there wasn't much 90mm ammunition for them. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Hit print screen, alt-tab out, run mspaint (or whatever), Ctrl+V to paste. Some folks also use a shareware program called Hypersnap, but that method works for me. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

Best German narrative I've read is It Never Snows in September, about Market-Garden. ------------------ Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.